Amatus of Montecassino

It traces the laborious clearing of ancient forests, the rude processes of primitive agriculture, the making of Norman cider and the breeding of the Norman horse, the vicissitudes of trade in fish and marten skins, in pottery, cheap cottons and strong waters, the development of a center of fashion like Trouville, or centers of war and commerce like Cherbourg and Havre.

It describes the slow building of monasteries and cathedrals and the patient labors of priests and monks, as well as the conquest of the Canaries, the colonization of Canada, and the exploration of the Great West.

A thousand years of such history are well worth a week of commemoration and retrospect.

To the American traveler who wends his way toward Paris from Cherbourg, Havre, or Dieppe, the first impression of Normandy is that of a country strikingly like England.

In 787, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us there, First came three ships of Northmen out of Herethaland, Denmark, whereupon the reeve of the Dorset port rode down to the place and would have driven them to the king's town because he knew not who they were, and they there slew him.

These were the first ships of Danishmen which sought the land of the English nation.

Six years later they fell upon the holy isle of Lindisfarne, pillaged the church, sacred with the memories of Northumbrian Christianity, and slew the monks or drove them to the sea.

In 807 they first landed in Ireland, and after this there came great sea-cast floods of foreigners into Arran, so that there was not a point thereof without a fleet.

It traces the laborious clearing of ancient forests, the rude processes of primitive agriculture, the making of Norman cider and the breeding of the Norman horse, the vicissitudes of trade in fish and marten skins, in pottery, cheap cottons and strong waters, the development of a centre of fashion like Trouville, or centres of war and commerce like Cherbourg and Havre.

It describes the slow building of monasteries and cathedrals and the patient labours of priests and monks, as well as the conquest of the Canaries, the colonisation of Canada, and the exploration of the Great West.

A thousand years of such history are well worth a week of commemoration and retrospect.

To the American traveller who wends his way toward Paris from Cherbourg, Havre, or Dieppe, the first impression of Normandy is that of a country strikingly like England.

In 787 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us there, First came three ships of Northmen out of Haritha land, Denmark, whereupon the reeve of the Dorset port rode down to the place and would have driven them to the king's town because he knew not who they were, and they there slew him.

These were the first ships of Danishmen which sought the land of the English nation.

Six years later they fell upon the holy isle of Lindisfarne, pillaged the church, sacred with the memories of Northumbrian Christianity, and slew the monks or drove them to the sea.

In 807 they first landed in Ireland, and after this there came great sea-cast floods of foreigners into Arran, so that there was not a point thereof without a fleet.